Blog on the Lillypad
Sunday, February 01, 2004
 | Back to the Massage Therapist
I've said this before: If you think massage is this calming, soothing, relaxing method of pampering yourself, you've obviously never tried trigger point massage. And I hope you never have to! But if you've got real muscle pain, trigger point is the way to go. But it really, really hurts. The therapist finds those exact points where the pain is most intense (the "trigger points") and centralized. Oddly, some pain from muscle spasm is "referred pain". If you can get the centralized point to relax and get back to normal, the referred pain will diminish. After the therapist finds the real culprit point, she (or he) puts her elbow right on the spot and then presses all her weight into it. It's amazing how precise an elbow can be in a spasmed muscle. My therapist's elbow feels like a red hot needle. |
I pay $40 per half hour for this treatment, which is about the normal rate. When the pain gets really, really bad as she works, I start to yell. She always backs off, and I say, "Don't stop; omigosh, don't ease off! This is costing so much money! Just keep doing it! I'll just yell." this always makes her start to laugh, but she usually does as I ask, or she adroitly takes a different spot to give me a bit of a breather. My therapist is a very gentle, soft spoken person, and my sheer intensity amazes her. The fact that I want to attack my pain like we would attack an enemy is contrary to her theory of therapy. But she will do as I ask her to.
| And she's good at locating those trigger points and mashing them with her needle-like elbow, under her full weight. She'll even stand on a stool in order to get all of her weight focused into a defiant muscle. There comes a point when the pain is so bad that I start using cuss words. Nothing of the sacrilegious variety. And I always apologize. But it's agony, yet so expensive I don't want her to ease off. So it goes, "Oh d--- it that hurts! Oh s---! No don't stop Gayle, keep going. I can't afford to rest. OK great! That's it. Oh s---- that hurts! No that's OK, keep going! D--- it! I'm sorry I'm swearing. I usually don't---Whoa, d--- it!" And on like that.
When I first started to see Gayle, my therapist, we had a lot of cuss intervals because my trigger points were so bad. Mistakenly, I would think she was pressing in at full bore, and then she would tell me she was only lightly pressing, but the trigger point was ultra-sensitive. |  |
Yesterday, when I went back to see her after about 8 weeks off, I expected a tough session. It was a two-cuss interval therapy, meaning there were two intervals in the half hour when it got so agonizing that the strong language popped out of me. But I could sense that actually the trigger points were responding pretty well. After the first couple times that she gave them the treatment, they smoothed out a bit more, and it wasn't nearly as bad.
I realize that I will need to see her on a consistent basis, so we are trying to work out a payment plan.
Last night when I talked to my good friend Bruce (a pal since childhood), he told me that he sees a massage therapist regularly (once a month) for a full hour. Bruce likes to play basketball and lift weights, and he has a tricky back as well. Once a month is enough at this point for him to have pretty good freedom of movement, but I am amazed that he can take an hour of therapy. He told me he has a pretty high threshold for withstanding that type of thing, and no, he doesn't burst out into four-letter words during treatment.
